Hot Stories On JoeBucsFan.com

Search Archives

Bucs Had The Lions’ Gameplan Down Pat

September 11th, 2011

Joe just made the rounds around the Bucs locker room and the unanimous consensus among the defense, including iconic elder Ronde Barber, was that the Bucs knew exactly what was coming from the Lions but couldn’t stop it.

The Bucs were completely ready. Matthew Stafford was just more ready, hitting deep seam routes and getting the ball out quickly, plus missed tackles and given away fumble recoveries — more on Quincy Black later — and too-good Calvin Johnson did the Bucs in.

“We gotta get off the field,” Barber said. “It wasn’t even a case of winning on third down. We have to win on first and second down. … We tried to limit [Stafford’s] sideline throws, what he does a lot. He beat us underneath. I give him credit. … It took us three quarters before we really reigned it back in.

“We knew what they were doing. And that’s the thing. We felt like we had their gameplan down. We knew it was going to be a lot of shotgun-quicks, a lot of counter-pass seams. We saw all that. We just didn’t execute.”

Joe’s not sure these were soothing words from Barber. The Bucs defense was ready, and that’s great. They just weren’t good enough.

I understand you can’t sack a guy who’s quick-passing from the shotgun or taking only 2-3 step drops and firing the ball immediately (just ask everyone who tried & failed to sack Dan Marino all those years).

However, this means the routes by the WR’s are quick and don’t take long to develop. This should give a good secondary a chance to zero in on things and eventually shut it down. The Bucs’ secondary didn’t do that. They were simply outmanned and outplayed today. All there is to it.

Very disappointing, as I thought our secondary was a strength. If they don’t show major improvement over the next few games this will be a low ranked pass defense for some inexplicable reason, after ranking pretty high last season.